Prince William FOIA case on global warming headed for Virginia Supreme Court
The fight by a conservative legal group and Del. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) to obtain the e-mails written by leading climate change scientist Michael E. Mann while he was at the University of Virginia was shot down by a judge in Prince William County last year. But Marshall and the legal group appealed, and the Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to take the case and rule on whether the state’s Freedom of Information Act exempts unpublished academic research from being disclosed to the public, even after it’s been concluded or has been released elsewhere.
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Richard C. Kast and Madelyn F. Wessel, U.Va.’s lawyers, argued that Judge Sheridan got it right when he ruled that the university had properly interpreted FOIA. They acknowledged that there was no judicial precedent on the FOIA exemption, but that “the policy of open government under the act is not ‘absolute,’” citing more than 100 exemptions in Virginia’s FOIA law. They noted that the Institute and Marshall challenge the judge’s interpretation of “proprietary,” but that the conservatives “offer no alternative definition or explanation as to why the plain meaning of the term should not apply.” Plain meaning, in U.Va.’s view, being “a thing or property owned or in the possession of one who manages and controls them.”
Mann said in an e-mail to me [the WaPo writer] that “I believe Judge Sheridan’s ruling protecting faculty research correspondence is correct and is precisely what Sen. Thomas Michie intended when he proposed his legislation to amend Virginia’s FOIA law and the legislature enacted in 1984 to enhance the ability of Virginia’s public colleges and university’s to protect the scholarly research endeavor.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/10/09/prince-william-foia-case-on-global-warming-headed-for-virginia-supreme-court/
“A win for UVA is a win for every organisation subject to FOI.”
And a loss to the taxpayers. >:-(
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And the students enrolled in these “re”education camps.
Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught regardless of the subject.
Maybe, just maybe this has little to do per se with Mann. Has it occurred to anyone that this process has run this far in order to hide the possibility that something in the emails shows that this scam goes right to the very top. I’m not talking climatologists or universities or local politics. I’m talking international scam overseen by the UN and national governments. Big people, big interests.
SteveT
My knee jerks everytime I see the suggestion that Mann should hand over the emails if he has nothing to hide. He and UVA should release the emails because it’s the law and I hope the court upholds this. The “nothing to hide” or “did nothing wrong” argument is not how we do things in the US.
I’m not interested in any emails where Mann shows us, again, what an arrogant, unlikable A** he is. We already know all about that. If he complains about colleagues or bosses, it’s immaterial to me. I’m interested in any suggestion that the science isn’t important, that the hockey stick is a good icon, even if inaccurate, or any talk of hiding data and blocking papers that don’t conform to the Team’s message. I surely don’t want to know about any porn trading. I’m sickened thoroughly about the Pachuri book… please spare me the visualization of Mann with a laptop in a private place.
“exempts unpublished … released elsewhere”. Isn’t there an aspect missing? Lawyers squabbling! This is a classic example of the difference between the law and a modicum of justice. Taxpayers are entitled to expect that academic research paid for from the public purse be available for public scrutiny.
I’d fight, a problem people like Mann and the CRU bunch have – besides revealing academic misconduct, is they’ve mixed personal and work correspondence.